Conservation and Environment in Mexico: Monthly Updates

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Conservation in Mexico - Monthly Update June 2011

The rains are here!

After a very long dry season, Mother Nature decided to deliver some much needed rain, and boy did she do just that! By the third week of June the torrential rains commenced giving us a good soaking, and marking the official beginning of our high season for turtle nest protection.

Even though we know the rain and thunder storms make our work more difficult, we also know that these conditions are essential for enticing the turtles out of the sea to lay their precious eggs. So farthis season we have buried 300 nests inourprotected corral area, with the arrival of these heavy rains we can hopefully anticipate another successful year of sea turtle conservation.

Unfortunately it wasn’t all good news that the rains brought.Onthe 20th June hurricane Beatriz hit the camp with winds of around 120 km per hour, leaving a great deal of damage to our facilities. As normal when we get any severe storm warnings, we moved inland for the night. When we returned we could see that most of the damage was to our tent area and in the south corral, where the winds managed to bring down the main pillars of the tent area and literally blew away half of the south corral.

Fortunately the damage was only material, and thanks to the invaluable help of our volunteers along with the local staff, we managed to reconstruct and improve our structuresin time for all of the new arrivals. The number of volunteers that have come to join our project this summer is constantly increasing, so the reconstructed camp area is now stronger than ever and ready to house our hard-working volunteers.

From this moment on the number of patrols are also being increased, with another shift going out every night, and as a result the amount of work in the corral is dramatically increasing every morning.

Floods at the Crocodile Farm

The rains also demonstrated their destructive powers on the crocodile farmwhere the water levels in the lagoon reached their highest in years,and consequently flooding the crocodile pools. Thiswouldn’t normally be a big deal for these reptiles, but because the crocodiles have already laid their eggs, the increase in humidity in the area might have an unwelcome effect on this year´s offspring, and the high water levels can damage some of the nests. Hopefully we will manage to see the birth of these amazing creatures and they will adapt well.

It's not all bad news though! A week ago we managed to collect a couple of nests from the lagoon. They have now been moved to slightly higher ground so there is a really good chance that the survival rate in these particular nests will remain high.

Difficulties are there for us to meet, and they come as a part of the job, we can only face them with a happy face always looking on the brightside!